Best. Blog Thread. Ever.

"Internetz anonymoity, I no has it animore. Kthxbai."

With this LOL Cat-inspired comment, so begins what might be the best thread in the history of the Internet. It might even beat the legendary Football Outsiders ROBO-Punter thread. Seriously.

So, basically, Feministing.com gets lots and lots of hate mail. Every so often, they'll post a hate e-mail or two for the viewing pleasure of their readers. Yesterday's "Anti-Feminist Mail Bag" had a twist - the hater made the mistake of sending it from his school e-mail address, rather than an anonymous one. Oops.

So now we know (in addition to his complete inability to punctuate) his name (Alex Kochno), where he goes to school, that his MySpace and Facebook profile pics are fug and - best part - that he's the public relations officer for the Southern Illinois University College Republicans. I mean, the post practically writes itself, doesn't it?

Now, something like this is pretty much guaranteed to entertain ("You guys got flamed by Ron Burgundy!") and to provide a certain amount of the guilty, mildly vicious pleasure that comes with schadenfreude (that's German for "Nelson-laugh," btw). But what really puts this over the top is the fact that other reps from that College Republicans chapter showed up to post.

It's not the flame-war you'd expect, from either side. A couple of CR officers offer sincere apologies and roundly condemn Kochno and his actions. Not a wimpy non-apology apology, either. They completely and totally throw themselves at the mercy of the other posters...who then don't flame them in return. It's all quite civil, actually. One leaves the comments section with a feeling that something productive happened, and will continue to happen, in the lives of the students involved.

Big, giant, applause-y kudos to the SIU College Republicans and their adviser, who handled the situation swiftly and professionally, with zero of the spin-or-cover-up style of crisis management popularized in political circles over the last few decades. Maybe there's hope for us yet...

(Oh, and kids? Don't drink and surf. It never ends well.)